'May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.'

I remember my early days as a Christian attending Jean Darnell’s musical, Come Together in Oxford Town Hall. I was captivated with the atmosphere, gave myself to worship, lifted my hands in the air for the first time and swayed along with the infectious congregational singing. The danger was that for a few years I camped out in this field of contemporary worship. It was enough just to stand, sing and offer a little shoe shuffle in honour of the King of kings.

Eventually I realised that this King also ruled over a kingdom. His rule was to express itself in the earth as much as I anticipated it operating beyond death. This rule required that I become a living embodiment in its expression. But what were the characteristics of the rule of God? I started simple with love God and love others. This appeared to fly in the face of how society chose to live and offered perhaps the greatest gift the Church might bring in demonstrating social and economic justice. Then the problems started. It was hard to love God because of the many distractions that constantly drew my attention. I prayed a short, dutiful prayer, yet never really entered into God’s presence. Little did I realise that God’s presence was available this side of my grave. To love God, I needed a relationship that was more than meeting down the pub for a game of darts once a week, which best summarised my church engagement.

Then loving others! I discovered there were very few people I wasn’t quietly critical of. Then as God revealed more of my own fracture, I discovered just how judgemental, self-seeking and narcissistic I was. Sadly, my life was built around seeing others as wrong and myself as right, so as my eyes opened to my reality and the Church’s responsibility (myself included) to partner with God in extending His kingdom, I sank back to my knees to say, how am I to live a kingdom life? My true Christian walk began that day.